the year of the fire pit

It’s all about people, my husband and I keep saying.  We love having people over, visiting with friends, meeting new people, exchanging thoughts and ideas, and sharing food and drink. 

Of course, all of that came to a screeching halt in March.  After the initial shock of being caught in a pandemic, knowing it would not be over anytime soon, we retreated home like everyone else, and began to feel isolated and lonely by May, like everyone else.  But we adapted, like everyone else, and sputteringly and warily reinvented how we could see people safely.  

The firepit, which had been on our minds since we moved here six years ago, finally and quickly became a reality in late spring out of necessity,  and it’s become our outdoor pandemic living room and mental lifesaver.  The benches around it are far enough apart that we can easily invite several other couples with every couple sitting about ten feet from the next.  Instead of proper glasses, we adopted papercups that we throw into the fire when done.  Hand sanitizer is always at the ready, and we greet each other with elbow bumps, foot shakes, and eight-feet-apart air kisses, feeling a little silly.

We have made more fires this season than during any other time, sitting around the pit, hors d’oeuvres and drinks in hand.  It is mesmerizing, magical, grounding, and so comforting to stare into the fire, bats fluttering above, with the starry night sky overhead, while flying sparks make for an impromptu firework here and there.  We set jam jars with tealights around the stone walls to find our way around, while torches light the outer surround of the firepit in a large circle.

We have made the best of this deeply unsettling and unique time, and in our memories this year will forever be imprinted as the year of the firepit gathering, which we often do several times a week.  What are your special memories of this unusual year?

what splendor!

It is so easy to coast within your existing belief lane around which you built your particular worldview, those safe beliefs that go with a known cosmology.  But from all I know, life is so much more awesome, wonderful, magical, amazing, unbelievably gorgeous, and ready to be reshaped by your thoughts so you can actually experience its magnificence for yourself. Please consider the possibility that the world may be quite different from what you thought it was.  

Below are a few statements from Neale Donald Walsch’s Book 3 of his The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue that may help to break something open.  

“Each moment ends the instant it begins.  

If you do not see this, you will not see what is exquisite in it, 

and you will call the moment ordinary.”

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“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

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“Nothing in the universe occurs by accident.  

There is no such thing as an “accident,” 

nor is there any such thing as “coincidence.”

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“Death is never an end, but always a beginning.  

A death is a door opening, not a door closing.”

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Ponder and savor the deep implications, and even enormity, of those words compared to our everyday assumptions. Walsch’s three books are actually chock full of thought provoking statements, many of them more mind bending than the ones above. 

We are traversing truly challenging times that beg for a complete change away from same-old-same-old, for a complete 180 from old assumptions that are simply getting us deeper into trouble instead of out of it.  We must each feel responsible for what’s happening to us, our neighbors, our country, our planet. We must each become convinced of the magnificence of life beyond our small little material existence.  We must each transcend the paralyzing fears that keep us limited and small.

We signed up for something so truly awesome when we came to this beautiful planet that we keep denying it simply because we don’t trust its splendor and believe we are not worthy of it.

our foibles

I don’t compost! I know, composting is a thing.  It’s what woke people do with their kitchen scraps, especially if they have a garden, as we do.  But we have tried it several times over the years and have not found the right formula.  We began with a black composting drum which just produced slime.  Then we did a compost pile in the backyard we threw our produce remnants on.  That produced some errant gourds, lots of weeds, and the occasional animal interested in cantaloupe peels, but no compost either.  The pile always looked like a pile of leftover vegetables, not too attractive.  Then we contemplated a worm bin. But – no. It’s just too much work.  So now we don’t compost.  

It can feel mildly irritating watching those “perfect” lifestyle pictures passing through your social media feed because it gives the false impression that the authors lead perfect, flawless, sustainable, holistic, beautiful, magical, fantastical and accomplished lives.  But nobody is perfect.  Nobody.

Here’s another one.  Cauliflower steaks.  The idea is cool, but the pictures lie.  You can only cut two perfect steaks out of one cauliflower because the slices hang together by the center core, the rest crumbles inevitably.  

So when your cauliflower steaks falls apart, when your Halloween pumpkin doesn’t look like Martha Stewart’s, when you feel bad about not composting, when your hair doesn’t have that perfect blow-out look every day or the polish on your toe nails is starting to chip, it’s ok. It is ok!  Sometimes we are beautiful, our home is beautiful, all is perfect and well, and sometimes it’s just not. That’s life.

no bad experience

A negative experience triggers in us one of the negative emotions like anger, frustration, or fear.  We identify such an experience as “bad” or “wrong,” as in “That was a bad move,” “You did it all wrong,” “She didn’t do the right thing,” or “I hated that.” We call that judging or condemning.  Pleasant experiences only trigger positive emotions, which we obviously don’t condemn or judge.  

Recently I was musing about the medical experiences I had when I was pregnant with my daughter.  I found the doctor visits invasive and symptom oriented, always looking for a problem or issue to prescribe yet another test or procedure.  The whole experience soured my relationship with the reactive Western medical model, and the emotional effects are lingering to this day.  I avoid going to doctors if I can help it.  On the other hand, the experience prompted my deep inquiry into the definition of health and trying to understand the healing process. 

It is so interesting to realize that every bad experience can be seen from two sides,  the “negative” side and the “positive” side.  It’s like accounting where every debit has to have an equivalent credit to balance the two sides, or both sides of an equation. 

Say you taste a new food and dislike it.  On the one side of the ledger you found out that you disliked that particular food and didn’t enjoy tasting it, on the other side you learned about a new food and had a novel experience which broadened your mind.   My “bad” medical experiences left me with a fear of doctors, but on the “positive” side initiated my interest in a more comprehensive and holistic approach to healing based on a deeper understanding of how the body heals or becomes ill.  Getting a bad grade, for example, could trigger a renewed interest in the subject matter, or getting your act together and applying yourself.  Fear of flying could inspire you to overcome that fear and become more courageous.

The same realization is helpful in relationships.  As a matter of fact, Byron Katie’s work, or The Work as she calls it, is all about that realization.  My husband, for example talks a lot about work, even when he is not working, which can frustrate me.  On the flipside, he is very passionate about his work, and without that passion he wouldn’t be so driven, experienced, successful and respected in his industry.  Now that I think about it, I realize that I can talk for hours about subjects that I’m deeply passionate about, which could really bore people who are not into the same issues.  

So there, the two sides of the coin, but habitually we only acknowledge one of them, the “bad” side.  One more insight is that it can take some time to realize the “positive” aspect of a “negative” experience.   The chapter on Health and Healing in my book for example couldn’t have come about had it not been for my “negative” medical experiences first. Yet, there was a lag of about 15 years between the experiences and the turnaround.